My long and lonely way to specialist

I started competitive programming in July 2021. After two and half years, that's a long time, I just reached specialist. After every wins and losses, I always thought my coder life is like a road without any ends. I wanted to give up more than one time, but the charm of competitive programming always kept me going, on the long and lonely way.

In the first year of competitive programming, I just learned binary search, greedy and some other algorithms. But I couldn't use them proficiently. I even failed in the first round of CSP-Junior (An primary competition in China). Although China was strong in competitive programming, there were only three coders in my school, and two of them were retired in the 9th grade. I felt lonely at that time because no one could teach me to improve except my programming teacher (my friends did't know anything about programming at all) until I found Codeforces.

Under the guidance of Luogu users, I created my CF account in October 2022. And I took part in my first contest named "Hello 2023". Due to the lack of adaptation to the new community, I got Wrong Answer for 3 times. Finally, I solved 2 problems in my first contest and gained 441 rating. That's a good start for me. Then my performance was getting better. After my fifth contest, I reached Pupil. Unluckily, I stuck in Pupil for almost 1 year. I gained and lossed several times. I watched some people improve quickly, and I wanted to practice more for reaching specialist.

No pain, no gain. On Feb 6th 2024, I solved 5 problems in one hour in a div3 round. Finally, I ranked 974 among 28,000 people. I gained 99 rating and reached the goal for 1 year. Near the Lunar New Year, the sound of firecrackers continued all the midnight. It was like congratulating me for the achievement. This time, I finally realized what the charm of competitive programming is. The road of competitive programming won't always be smooth, but the belief in success will inspire you to keep going. Looking back, I don't have any regrets. My programming teachers and the community are always with me. I want to say this inspiring sentence — You'll never walk alone!